These polls don't really matter, but in the last 5 days HR Clinton has dropped 7 points in the Rasmussen tracking poll and Obama has jumped 6 points.

Now we can stop arguing over who won the foreign policy debate.

Plowboy

www.revieweder.blogspot.com

The vast majority of these polls are gonna be driven by articles on political point-scoring, or commercials, or the random op-ed. I got an email from my dad being like, "I was leaning towards Obama, but now, the way Hillary has been painting him as inexperienced, maybe I'm thinking we should go with her"

He and I chatted about it, I didn't try to jump down his throat or anything, but I asked him if he was planning on voting in the primary, and he was like, "i just may. when is it?" lol.

turns out his a registered Ind. and can't even vote in the primary. Hasn't watched a single a debate and won't be watching till its "our guys vs their guys" (his words).

In a survey, he'd go down as a likely voter (in the general) and a Dem-leaning independent, which means he'd be included in the field of most national polls as a "Dem" who characterizes himself as "paying close attention" to the primary race.

These are your average American voters. They won't be getting into the substance of this stuff for months.

People are forgetting absentee ballots. MOre and more people are using them and this could influence the final ooutcome. If, say, there is a surprise in Iowa or NH then many people run the risk of having their vote cast for someone no longer competitive. The huge national leads for Clinton bode well for the absentee ballots. It's also unclear whether or not the smaller early states will have as much influence this time as last. Without huge upsets or if they are all close, a huge momentum spin won't be as effective in which case the "national primary" totals will probably reflect the polls leading up to the election.

Also, Kerry wasn't all that surprising (Edwards, perhaps, was). Kerry was struggling until he did something drastic: he opted out of public financing and dumped in some of his own money. That greatly changed the dynamic of the race and if you found Iowa extremely shocking then you probably weren't paying attention to Kerry's enormous increases after his bold move. The early polls last time didn't mean anything because Kerry changed the dynamic late in the game. Without that change, I doubt Kerry would have won and we'd all be talking about how great President Clark has been.

But, I think Obama is in decent position right now. Much better than Edwards, I'd say. I still have yet to see a massive push by Clinton and since she's doing well, she hasn't had to bring out the big guns. That could influence the race significantly. I don't think the race is that volatile...yet.

I agree . . . If Bob Novak wrote it, one of three things must be true:

1. Whatever the topic is . . . It was incorrectly interpreted by Novak,

2. Whatever the topic is . . . The information was leaked by the political arm of White House AND the facts are incorrect, or

3. Whatever the topic is . . . It is incorrectly interpretted by Novak AND leaked by the White House AND, of course, the facts are incorrect.

A pig wearing lipstick is still a pig wearing lipstick.

Bob Novak is an idiot! Plain and simple! I am disappointed that TPM reported what he had to say, the guy is a sore loser!

I agree with Novak, for the first time ever perhaps.

Romney is being underestimated. I'm starting to think that it's his race to lose. Thompson may have waited too long. McCain has faded, and Rudy also has in the early states. It will likely be a two or three man race.

The Dem race is very close in the early states. It will be interesting to see if someone breaks out of the pack.

After all, just remember how John Kerry took off from his Iowa victory to easily win the nomination in 2004, after being stuck at the bottom of the pack for months up to that point. And a national poll simply cannot capture that dynamic.

This seems to be the conventional wisdom of elections past. However, word on the street is that the momentum from the 3 early state primaries will have minimum impact on CA due to them moving up their primary, as well as HRClintons strategy to capitalize on her national lead in the poll by encouraging absentee ballots which would be cast before the IA,NH and SC primaries have barely ended.

CA has more electoral votes than those 3 states combined which is how HRClinton plans to blunt the impact of the momentum from those states.

Hillary's strategy is to make CA her firewall for any early state wins by Obama and Edward. Hopefully, they are wise to this tactic and can send in CampObama volunteers to CA in December and use their funds to unleash a ton of ads for Obama 08.

Obama is going to need his grassroot donors to send in more money to beat Hillary in CA

According to Greg Palast this absentee ballot strategy will result in losing the General Election as the GOP has mastered this voter suppression technique. aka caging

What I've been saying for the last 3 weeks...the Hillary bump was illusory. Expect minor fluctuations for the next few months, but nothing major. It would take a huge campaign gaffe to really change things, and as much as Hillary supporters want the Pakistan thing to be a huge gaffe, I'm not even convinced it was a gaffe at all. 3 weeks later, here we are: right back where we started. And while I'm sure most Obama and Edwards supporters are hoping for the lobbyists and "don't talk about it" comments to be major gaffes for Hillary, I sincerely doubt those are election changers.